Developing Progress: Ensuring that public resources contribute to New York’s equity, resilience, and dynamic democracy
Progressive development policies that ensure consideration of economic, social, and environmental impacts will grow a...
Progressive development policies that ensure consideration of economic, social, and environmental impacts will grow a city that is equitable, resilient, and democratic. While stimulating new revenues for the city, progressive development policies will also promote the economic and environmental sustainability of our communities and provide good jobs to both construction and permanent employees.
Download the report.
Each year New York City invests $2 billion to encourage private development, but it does not require progressive development practices, transparency about job creation or other contributions to community well-being, or accountability to benchmarks that could demonstrate the return on this investment.
Starwood Capital Group’s track record for development in New York City provides a good example of the problems with the current approach to the public’s investment. While some Starwood developments meet responsible development standards, others endanger workers and other community members. Notably, on its publicly subsidized project at Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Starwood has partnered with a general contractor with a history of safety violations and alleged illegal behavior.
Examples like the Pier 1 project highlight the need for higher standards with stronger enforcement on projects the public invests in. Brooklyn Bridge Park – particularly, the development of Pier 6 there – offers the city an opportunity to develop principles, institute policies, and enforce standards to ensure that public resources contribute to New York’s equity, resilience, and dynamic democracy.
We recommend that immediate steps be taken as a broader set of progressive development policies takes shape:
The request for proposals for development of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6 should include strong, clear criteria to promote the economic and environmental sustainability. Starwood Capital should use only responsible contractors and subcontractors on the Pier 1 project. Pension funds should withhold future investments with Starwood Capital until the group meets the pension funds’ Responsible Contractor standards. Developers should be legally accountable and culpable for the safety, health, and environmental conditions on their worksites. Penalties for violations of safety, health, building, and environmental standards, as well as for violations of community benefits and other agreements in public contracts should be raised.Download the full report here.
Hillary Clinton lays out sweeping voting fights vision
In a major speech on voting rights Thursday, Hillary Clinton ...
In a major speech on voting rights Thursday, Hillary Clinton laid out a far-reaching vision for expanding access to the ballot box, and denounced Republican efforts to make voting harder.
Speaking at Texas Southern University in Houston, Clinton called for every American to be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 unless they choose not to be. She backed a nationwide standard of at least 20 days of early voting. She urged Congress to pass legislation strengthening the Voting Rights Act, which was gravely weakened by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. And she slammed restrictive voting laws imposed by the GOP in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, which she said affect minorities and students in particular.
“We have a responsibility to say clearly and directly what’s really going on in our country,” Clinton said, “because what is happening is a sweeping effort to dis-empower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people, and young people from one end of our country to the other.”
“We should be clearing the way for more people to vote, not putting up every road-block anyone can imagine,” Clinton added.
From a political perspective, forthrightly calling out Republican voting restrictions and advocating greater access to voting will likely help Clinton shore up key sections of her base – minorities and students in particular. And it could put the GOP on notice that further efforts to make voting harder may backfire by giving Democrats a tool to motivate their supporters.
Clinton, the prohibitive front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, called out by name several of her potential 2016 rivals – Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie – for supporting restrictive voting policies. She said Republicans should stop “fearmongering about a phantom epidemic of voter fraud.”
“Finally, a presidential candidate is acknowledging the rampant voting discrimination that has surged since the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013,” Wade Henderson, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told msnbc. “Voting is a cornerstone of our nation’s commitment to democracy, and Clinton’s acknowledgment of its importance is noteworthy.”
Clinton said relatively little about the most hot-button voting issue, voter ID – an approach that also appears politically savvy. Despite evidence that as many as 10% of eligible voters, disproportionately minorities, don’t have the ID required by strict versions of the law, polls show voter ID is generally popular.
Instead, Clinton sought to move the voting rights debate for 2016 toward more advantageous terrain for Democrats and voting rights supporters: expanding access to voting and voter registration, to make it easier to cast a ballot and bring more Americans into the process.
Noting that between one quarter and one third of all Americans aren’t registered to vote, Clinton called for an across-the-board modernization of the registration process. The centerpiece: universal automatic voter registration, in which every citizen is automatically registered when they turn 18 unless they affirmatively choose not to be, effectively changing the system’s default status from non-registered to registered. Oregon passed such a law earlier this year, and several other states, including California, are considering the idea.
“I think this would have a profound impact on our elections and our democracy,” Clinton said.
Clinton also said registration should be updated automatically when a voter moves, and called for making voter rolls more accurate secure. And she said Republican efforts to restrict voter registration, seen in Texas, Florida, and other states, disproportionately affect marginalized communities, and students.
Around 50 million eligible voters aren’t registered, according to a recent study by the Center for Popular Democracy, based on Census Bureau data. That’s three times as many as the number who are registered but stay home.
Clinton said the nationwide early voting standard of at least 20 days should also include evening and weekend voting, to accommodate those with work or family commitments.
“If families coming out of church on Sunday are inspired to go vote, they should be free to do just that,” Clinton said, in a reference to the Souls to the Polls drives that are popular in Africa-American communities, in which people vote en masse after church.
Wisconsin, Ohio, and North Carolina — all Republican-controlled states — have cut their early voting periods in recent years, with the latter two states also eliminating same-day voter registration. And a third of all states offer no early voting at all. Democratic efforts to create or expand early voting have been killed, or allowed to languish in committee, by Republicans in at least 15 states, eight of them in the south, according to a tally compiled by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
In addition, Clinton called for Congress to fully implement the recommendations of a bipartisan presidential panel on voting released last year, which included online voter registration and establishing the principle that voters shouldn’t wait more than 30 minutes. And she suggested that laws barring ex-felons from voting should be liberalized, adding her voice to a growing push against felon disenfranchisement laws.
And Clinton lamented the Supreme Court’s weakening of the Voting Rights Act.
“We need a Supreme Court that cares more about protecting the right to vote of a person to vote than the right of a corporation to buy an election,” she said.
Asked by msnbc on a call with reporters whether it was realistic to propose legislation, given the record of the Republican-controlled Congress, a senior official with the Clinton campaign pointed to ”encouraging signs” in the states, arguing that such changes could be implemented at the state level with federal support.
On voter ID, Clinton’s criticism of Texas’s law was centered on a provision that allows concealed gun permits but not student IDs, suggesting partisan bias. She didn’t offer the kind of broader condemnation of ID laws per se often voiced by voting and civil rights groups. And in criticizing Wisconsin and North Carolina’s slew of voting restrictions, she focused on cuts to early voting rather than those states’ ID laws.
Hours before Clinton spoke, a de facto arm of her campaign that provides pro-Clinton information to the media sent out an email documenting the GOP 2016 hopefuls’ records of supporting restrictive voting policies, which it contrasted with Clinton’s expansive approach.
Clinton’s speech comes less than a week after her campaign’s top lawyer, Marc Elias, filed suit to challenge Wisconsin’s voting restrictions. Last month, Elias filed a similar lawsuit challenging Ohio’s early voting cuts.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted called the lawsuit “frivolous” in a statement to msnbc and said Elias is wasting Ohioans’ tax dollars. “Hillary Clinton is calling for a national standard for early voting that is less than what Ohio currently offers,” Husted said. “Given this fact, I call on her to tell her attorneys to drop her elections lawsuit against Ohio.”
The Clinton campaign has said it’s not officially involved in the lawsuits but supports them.
In choosing to give the speech in Texas, Clinton was going into the belly of the beast. In addition to the ID law, which has been struck down as racially discriminatory and is currently being appealed, Texas also has the strictest voter registration rules in the country. And last week, a voting group alleged that the state is systematically failing to process registration applications, msnbc reported.
Clinton has long had a strong record on voting issues. As a volunteer for the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign, Clinton worked to register Latino voters in Texas. And in 2005 as a senator, she introduced an expansive voting bill that would have made Election Day a national holiday and set standards for early voting.
At Texas Southern, Clinton received the Barbara Jordan Leadership Award, named for the crusading civil rights leader who was the first southern black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Source: MSNBC
Schumer and Pelosi on Opposite Sides of Budget Deal, As the Fate of DREAMers Hangs in the Balance
Schumer and Pelosi on Opposite Sides of Budget Deal, As the Fate of DREAMers Hangs in the Balance
After failing to force a government shutdown before Christmas, advocates from a variety of groups, including United We...
After failing to force a government shutdown before Christmas, advocates from a variety of groups, including United We Dream, The Center for Popular Democracy, and Make The Road, managed to convince Senate Democrats to do so in January.
Read the full article here.
Richmond Fed Chief Pick Renews Debate on Shrouded Hiring Process
Richmond Fed Chief Pick Renews Debate on Shrouded Hiring Process
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s decision to hire Thomas Barkin as its next president has renewed questions over...
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s decision to hire Thomas Barkin as its next president has renewed questions over the cloaked process of selecting officials who set the most widely watched policy interest rates in the world.
After a nearly yearlong search, Richmond’s board of directors Monday confirmedthey had chosen the McKinsey & Co. executive to start on Jan. 1. Barkin will be a voter on the interest-rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee in 2018.
Read the full article here.
Report: Language access isn’t great
Capitol Confidential – August 7, 2013, by Jimmy Vielkind - Several immigrant advocacy groups released a report this...
Capitol Confidential – August 7, 2013, by Jimmy Vielkind - Several immigrant advocacy groups released a report this week saying it’s still difficult to get access to government services in languages other than English, nearly two years after Gov. Andrew Cuomo decreed that written and oral interpretation would be available the state’s six most-spoken foreign languages.
Cuomo signed an executive order that took effect last October mandating state officials to offer language assistance for speakers of Spanish, French, Italian, French Creole, Russian and Chinese. But the order’s scope was necessarily limited to state agencies, even though state-funded services like food stamps, driver’s licenses and unemployment benefits are administered by New York City or other counties.
The groups — including Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities at the University at Albany — visited government offices and surveyed people with limited English proficiency to develop a measure of compliance. Overall, they found that less than half the people who needed language assistance were able to receive it.
According to Nisha Agarwal, deputy director of the Center for Popular Democracy, the survey found 63 percent of citizens using state-operated facilities that are explicitly covered by the order were not successful in their quest to gain language assistance.
“The governor’s team has been very engaged on implementation, and we’re sympathetic to the challenges of getting an entire state apparatus to change,” said Agarwal. “That said, the results are by no means satisfactory, and we were quite disappointed that the state took the position that county-run agencies for state services were not within the ambit of the order. We feel it’s a pretty big gap.”
A Cuomo spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Coalition Calls for Fed Focus on Full Employment, Higher Wages
The Dallas Morning News - March 4, 2015, by Sheryl Jean - A coalition of community and labor groups in Texas is calling...
The Dallas Morning News - March 4, 2015, by Sheryl Jean - A coalition of community and labor groups in Texas is calling for the Federal Reserve to focus on full employment and higher wages for blacks and others in poor neighborhoods who have been left behind in the economic recovery.
The group also wants the board of the Fed’s regional bank in Dallas to keep that in mind as it searches for a replacement for Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher, who will retire March 19.
Liberal activists across the country on Thursday plan to protest outside seven Fed regional banks, including New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis, to highlight high unemployment among minority groups and to urge officials not to raise interest rates yet and instead focus on full employment and higher wages. A demonstration also was planned at the Dallas Fed’s office on the edge of downtown, but was canceled due to a forecast for bad weather.
Still, activists in Dallas plan to call attention to a new report showing that the nation’s economic recovery hasn’t reached many minority communities. Falling jobless rates maskhigh black and long-term unemployment and racial inequality in wages in Texas and across the country.
The 84-page report by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute shows that Texas’ average jobless rate was 5 percent in 2014, but it was 9.5 percent for blacks. In the Dallas metro area, the average rate was 5.1 percent last year, but it was 9.6 percent for blacks. Nationally, the black jobless rate was 10.3 percent, compared with a national average of 6.2 percent.
Wages also lagged. Texas’ median wage grew 3.9 percent from 2000 to 2014, but it rose 8 percent for whites and declined 0.8 percent for blacks, according to the report. Nationally, wages have been stagnant for most workers since 2000.
“If the Fed raises [interest] rates to banks, then our rates go up, but wages aren’t going up,” said Danny Cendejas, senior organizer in Dallas for the Texas Organizing Project, one of the groups in the coalition. “It’s something that is very concerning for most of our community. In the black and brown communities, where we know the unemployment rates are higher, how do we expect those people to pay their loans back?”
The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since 2008 to help spur business lending to create jobs and boost the economy.
Coalition members in Texas want a more open search process for Fisher’s replacement with more involvement by the community. Fisher, who was in El Paso on Wednesday, has been one of the most vocal advocates of raising interest rates sooner than later.
“Look around at all the construction cranes in Dallas,” said Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO. “I think the lower interest rates are spurring businesses to do work and then they’re hiring people. We just don’t want an interest rate policy that isn’t good for workers in the state.”
Moeller was among a group of 10 community leaders who met with three Fed representatives — general counsel John Buchanan; Alfreda Norman, head of community development and public affairs; and spokesman James Hoard — for about 90 minutes in January to discuss the search process for a new president, the timeline and the qualifications sought.
“We had a good conversation and thought we answered their questions,” Hoard said. The Dallas Fed put the name of the search firm and its email address on its website for anyone interested in nominating a candidate, he added.
Moeller has a different view of the meeting.
“We don’t have a candidate, but we felt like we had some input we wanted to share,” she said. “We don’t want it to be someone who wouldn’t be good for jobs in the future. We wanted to make sure they were looking at the economic factors that relate to real people in Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. We have low-wage workers who can’t get their head above water. We have folks who are long-term unemployed.”
In addition to the Texas AFL-CIO, the groups that met with the Dallas Fed were the American Federation of Teachers, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Harris County Central Labor Council, Jobs With Justice, Texas Organizing Project and Workers Defense Project.
Coalition members last summer protested the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., forum and met with Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen in November.
Yellen and three other Fed officials met with about 30 workers and activists, including some from Texas, for an hour to hear their plights of being long-term unemployed and struggling to make a living. As a result, the Fed created the Community Advisory Council in January to provide different perspectives on the economy, especially the needs of low- to moderate-income families.
“She listened very carefully and was very engaged and was grateful to us for requesting the meeting,” said Ady Barkan, staff lawyer for the Center for Popular Democracy, who was at the meeting. “It’s the kind of response we would like to see from others.”
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Three Labels Control 80% Of The U.S. Music Industry. What Responsibility Comes With That Power?
Three Labels Control 80% Of The U.S. Music Industry. What Responsibility Comes With That Power?
In recent months, the music media has responded to the political climate by zooming in on artist behavior: Have or...
In recent months, the music media has responded to the political climate by zooming in on artist behavior: Have or haven’t they condemned Trump? Where do they stand? What do they suggest we do to resist? Publications including The FADER have increasingly looked to celebrities to provide a moral compass, to demonstrate what large-scale compassion looks like, and to show their peers what they’re doing wrong.
Read the full article here.
Nationwide #DisneyLetHimGo Protests Call on Disney CEO to Leave Trump Council
NATIONWIDE - Today the Center for Popular Democracy and its affiliates including Organize Florida and ACCE, together...
NATIONWIDE - Today the Center for Popular Democracy and its affiliates including Organize Florida and ACCE, together with national allies Color of Change, CREDO, Free Press, MoveOn.org, People’s Action, SumOfUs.org and Working Families Party protested Disney locations around the country. Following the lead of Orlando Disney workers and Orlando community groups, the social justice groups called on Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger to step down from his role as a member of Trump’s Business Advisory Council. The coalition collected over 390,000 petitions to Disney on behalf of people from across the country who demand Iger leave the council.
“Disney has the power to take a stand against Trump and support a happy ending for all families. They must follow in Uber’s footsteps and quit the economic advisory council instead of collaborating with Trump and his authoritarian, hateful, anti-immigrant regime,” said Jennifer Epps-Addison, Network President and Co-Executive Director for the Center for Popular Democracy.
Racial and social justice activists say this is only the first step in what will be a continuous fight to protect the health and well-being of all people — including immigrants, people of color, minimum wage workers, and the LGBT community during the Trump administration. Disney is one of more than a dozen other corporations still on Trump’s economic advisory council. CPD aims to hold each and every one of them accountable.
“Donald Trump has built his brand and presidency by disparaging Latino, Muslim, and Black communities as well as women and people with disabilities. As a corporation that has touted itself as valuing diversity, inclusion and family I would think that CEO Bob Iger would seek to distance himself, not embrace or enable Trump and Steve Bannon’s bigoted agenda. But instead, Iger and other CEOs continue to place access to power over people’s lives under the false pretense of influencing positive change. To be clear- any CEO who thinks they can disrupt Trump and Bannon’s agenda is either disingenuous or fooling themselves” said Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of Color Of Change.
"By standing with Trump, Iger has mistaken his role as the CEO of the Walt Disney Company. He cannot just represent the business concerns of the company for trade and tax regulations, but must also represent the ethics and values that the Disney brand sells to families around the world. It’s time that our corporations put immigrants, workers and refugees first" said Yulissa Arce, Central Florida Director, Organize Florida.
"It is appalling that any leader would be willing to advance company interests on the backs of the people most threatened by Trump’s hate,” said Heidi Hess, Senior Campaign Manager at CREDO. "CEOs like Disney’s Bob Iger who serve on Trump’s advisory councils have to make a choice: Stand up for morality and human dignity or side with Trump’s racist, misogynistic and xenophobic hate."
The announcement comes after successful protests around the country led to the resignation of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick from the Trump business council. Last week, drivers and other community organizations organized #UberRidesWithHate protests at Uber offices in New York City, San Francisco, and New Orleans, among other nationwide locations, demanding that the ride-sharing company stop collaborating with the Trump administration.
"Disney is known for it's fun-loving family movies. But there's nothing fun about what the Trump Administration is doing to immigrant families. Disney can sing 'It's a Small World' all they want, but until Bob Iger steps down from Trump's economic advisory council, they'll be singing out of tune, “ said Liz Ryan Murray, Policy Director at People's Action.
"Disney CEO Bob Iger is validating Trump’s violent agenda by serving on his advisory council.” explained Nicole Carty, Campaign Manager for SumOfUs.org. “We know Iger supports immigration, and has employees that will be impacted by the ban. By remaining on Trump’s advisory board Iger is signaling his own interests and profits are more important than the basic human rights of his employees, customers and vulnerable refugees. There is no neutral,” added Carty. “Either Iger steps off the advisory committee, or he is complicit in the violence and chaos that Trump’s administration is creating.”
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www.populardemocracy.org
Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda
Seattle’s Lessons for Bernie Sanders Activists After the Elections
Seattle’s Lessons for Bernie Sanders Activists After the Elections
According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things,”...
According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things,” linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and achievable steps that city government can take to address local manifestations of the larger problem.
As the 2016 primary season draws to an end and Bernie Sanders backers look beyond next month’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia, many who have “felt the Bern” have their eye on local politics.
Hundreds, if not thousands, will be heeding the call of Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Sanders’ endorser and convention delegate. “We need people running for school boards,” Ellison told the New York Times in May. “We need people running for City Council. We need people running for state legislatures. We need people running for zoning boards, for park boards, to really take this sort of message that Bernie carried and carry it in their own local communities.”
Fortunately for those seeking relevant political advice, former Seattle City Councilor Nick Licata has just published a handbook called Becoming A Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies, & Advice For Changing Our World (Sasquatch Books, 2016). His book draws on 17 years of experience as a progressive elected official and varied campus and community organizing work before that.
Like Sanders, Licata was a sixties radical. He belonged to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Bowling Green State University and first learned retail politics at the dormitory level when he ran successfully for student government president.
Like some Sanders supporters who may become candidates in the near future, Licata had an unconventional resume when he first sought public office. He had lived in a well-known Seattle commune for 20 years and founded two alternative publishing ventures, the People’s Yellow Pages and the Seattle Sun. A Democrat with Green Party sympathies, he defeated a candidate who was backed by the mainstream media and out-spent him two to one.
“In the previous 128 city council elections, only two candidates had won when both daily newspapers endorsed their opponent,” Licata reports, so “the odds didn’t look good.” Fortunately, his message that the city should invest more resources “in all neighborhoods and not concentrate them in just a few” resonated with an electoral coalition of “young renters” and “older home-owners.” Licata’s own track record of neighborhood activism gave him the necessary name recognition and grassroots street cred to win.
Becoming A Citizen Activist is full of useful tips about how activists and allied politicians can collaborate on issue-oriented campaigns. His book makes clear that “going local” is different from backing a presidential campaign focused on national and international questions. According to Licata, progressives must develop the ability to “see the small things that generate the big things,” linking voter concerns about global threats like climate change to concrete and achievable steps that city government can take to address local manifestations of the larger problem.
He describes how Seattle’s four years of skirmishing over plastic bag regulation originated in one neighborhood’s opposition to a new waste transfer station. What might have been just another exercise in NIMBYism evolved into a city-wide push for waste reduction at its source, plus much greater recycling. A plastic bag fee, imposed by the city council, was overturned after a plastic bag industry-funded referendum campaign, but the city’s ban on Styrofoam containers survived. In 2011, the city council passed a broad ban on single-use plastic bags, which the industry opted not to challenge either in court or at the polls.
Licata’s other examples of progressive policy initiatives include raising local labor standards, strengthening civilian oversight of the police, providing greater protection for undocumented immigrants, decriminalizing marijuana possession and using cultural programs to foster a sense of community.
Several of his most interesting case studies reveal the tendency of legislators—even liberal-minded ones—to be overly timid and skeptical about policy initiatives that push the envelope. In 2011, for example, Licata tried to lower the expectations of constituents who met with him about a paid sick leave mandate opposed by local employers.
“I cautioned that it was not likely that we’d see it anytime soon,” he admits in the book. Yet, less than nine months later, he was “shown to be wrong.” Not only was there sufficient public support, but “well-organized advocacy groups” marshaled “a wealth of data to prove that the sky wouldn’t fall if paid sick leave passed.”
Several years later, when some Seattle fast food workers staged union-backed job actions to highlight their minimum wage demand, it was the same story:
Politicians like me were sympathetic but also felt that fifteen dollars was way too big a lift. In my own case, I thought there were more readily achievable goals—like fighting wage theft. I found myself initially offering cautious verbal support and not much more.
What made Seattle’s “Fight for 15” winnable was grassroots organizing by local labor organizations and left-wing activists, who were able to inject the issue into the 2013 mayoral race between incumbent Mike McGinn and his challenger, state senator Ed Murray. Shortly before the election, Murray endorsed a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour while McGinn insisted that Washington state should take action instead of the city.
Key socialist presence
That year, it also made a big difference to have an energetic and charismatic socialist candidate running for city council under the “Fight for 15” banner. Kshama Sawant took on Richard Conlin, “a well-liked liberal politician” who cast the city council’s lone vote against paid sick leave and opposed raising the minimum wage without further study. According to Licata, Conlin, like McGinn, was defeated due to the votes of “many disaffected Democrats who wanted more aggressive council members willing to speak out on issues.”
Once elected, Sawant was quick to utilize what Licata calls “the unique means that public officials have to help mobilize the public”: holding public hearings, forming issue-oriented or constituency-based task forces and commissions and backing ballot measures like the threatened popular referendum on “15 Now” that kept Mayor Murray and his allies from weakening minimum wage legislation more than they did in 2014.
Yet when Sawant—a generation younger than Licata—first ran against his longtime colleague, Richard Conlin, the council’s most left-leaning member didn’t support her. In Becoming a Citizen Activist, Licata now acknowledges Sawant’s unusual strengths as a radical politician, including her social media savvy, “dedicated following” and ability to project “a message that resonated with the public.” Her tweets, blogging and website use “helped her obtain 80 percent citywide name recognition after a year on the council, far surpassing all the other council members,” Licata reports.
According to the author, local pollsters surveying the relative popularity of city councilors prior to Seattle’s 2015 election found that Sawant’s “numbers were higher than all the others but mine, and I beat her by only one point.” These results might explain why Mayor Murray and the Seattle business community failed to unseat their Socialist Alternative critic when she ran for re-election last year, with Licata’s backing this time. (Licata himself chose to retire from the city council.)
New Forms of Organization
Readers interested in further detail about their over-lapping council careers will have to wait for American Socialist, a political memoir by Sawant (to be published by Verso next year) or Jonathan Rosenblum’s forthcoming book for Beacon Press about labor and politics in Seattle. Rosenblum worked on Sawant’s re-election campaign which, in his view, demonstrated “the indispensability of organization” and an “independent political base.”
Unlike Licata’s own more typical electoral efforts in the past, Sawant’s “campaign strategies and tactics were not directed by a single candidate or campaign manager.” Instead, Rosenblum points out, they were “developed through collective, thoughtful discussions” among Socialist Alternative members who live in Seattle and “are connected to a broader base of union and community activists.”
One limitation of Licata’s book is the absence of any discussion about fielding slates of progressive candidates who are committed to a common platform that includes rejection of corporate contributions. To his credit, Licata did play a major role in creating the multi-city network of progressive elected officials known as Local Progress. In the Bay Area, this group includes Richmond, Calif., city councilor (and former mayor) Gayle McLaughlin, whose Richmond Progressive Alliance only runs candidates who spurn business donations.
Nationally, about 400 mayors, city councilors, county supervisors and school board members use Local Progress as a “think tank” and clearing house for alternative public policies. Assisted by the Center for Popular Democracy in New York, the group distributes a 60-page handbook for improving labor and environmental standards, housing and education programs, public safety, and municipal election practices. At annual conferences—like its national meeting in Pittsburgh on July 8-9—local victories of the sort Licata describes in his book are dissected and their lessons disseminated.
Local Progress leaders believe that neither street politics nor electoral victories alone will make a sufficient dent in the status quo. As Licata told his fellow “electeds” when they met in New York two years ago, municipal government changes for the better only when progressives have “an outside and inside game…people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.” Licata’s new book provides many useful examples of that necessary synergy.
By STEVE EARLY
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Ahead of Black Friday, Walmart Workers Brief Capitol Hill Lawmakers
People's World - November 19, 2014 - Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D, Mass., Rep. George Miller, D,Calif., and legislative...
People's World - November 19, 2014 - Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D, Mass., Rep. George Miller, D,Calif., and legislative experts held a committee briefing today, titled Walmart and the Economic Insecurity of American Families. Only a week before Black Friday job actions that are expected at more than 1,000 Walmart stores nationwide the lawmakers heard from members of OUR Walmart on how the country's largest employer is creating an economic crisis for working families in America.
"I was glad to join Walmart employees today to support efforts to push back against practices by Walmart and other big corporations that make it hard for working families to make ends meet," said Warren. "Hardworking men and women across the country want a fighting chance to build a future for themselves and their families. We need to give workers this chance by raising the minimum wage, providing some basic fairness in scheduling, and fighting for equal pay for equal work."
"Walmart's shoddy business model is singlehandedly wreaking havoc on American families across the country and making it impossible for hundreds of thousands of workers to have a shot at the American Dream," said Miller, senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. "America's workers and their families deserve better than they're getting from Walmart today-they deserve higher wages, less erratic schedules, and equal pay regardless of their gender. The courage of Walmart workers who are engaged in sit-down strikes to protest the company's illegal silencing of workers who have called for better jobs and full-time work is essential to creating real change."
At the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee briefing, Walmart workers discussed how Walmart's low pay, manipulation of scheduling and illegal threats to workers have created a new norm across industries that makes it nearly impossible for workers to hold down second jobs, arrange child care, go to school or manage health conditions.
"With Walmart's low-wages and hectic schedules, too many Walmart workers are left on the edge of poverty. But all too often when we stand up, Walmart tries to silence us. Just days before I planned to participate in our first sit-down strike in LA, Walmart fired me for speaking up for better wages and hours, but I'm still fighting today because my former colleagues like Fatmata Jabbie and Cantare Davunt deserve better," said Evelin Cruz, former Walmart employee and OUR Walmart member.
The briefing highlighted the Schedules That Work Act, Fair Minimum Wage Act and Paycheck Fairness Act-legislation that would force the company to improve its pay and hours for hundreds of thousands of American workers. Legislative experts including Carol Joyner of the Labor Project for Working Families, Amy Traub of Demos and Carrie Gleason of the Center for Popular Democracy joined the elected officials and Walmart associates on the panel to discuss the need for legislative action to set a new standard at the country's largest employer.
The action from elected officials comes as an increasing number of Americans and Walmart workers point to OUR Walmart as making significant changes at the country's largest retailer. Most recently, after public calls from OUR Walmart, the company committed to raise wages for its lowest paid workers and rolled out a new scheduling system that allows workers to sign up for open shifts. To date, workers at more than 2,100 Walmart stores nationwide have signed a petition calling on Walmart and the Waltons to publicly commit to paying $15 an hour and providing consistent, full-time hours.
"In three short years, OUR Walmart has grown to a powerful, national network that is making big changes at the country's largest employer," said Cantare Davunt, a Walmart customer service manager and OUR Walmart member during the briefing today."But more needs to be done. Legislative action would have a huge impact, but Walmart can lead the way now by adopting policies that give us the schedules and pay we need."
The briefing comes before next week's Black Friday nationwide strikes. Tens of thousands of workers, teachers, voters, clergy, environmentalists, and civil rights leaders will join workers at more than 1,600 protests, speaking out against retaliation and calling on Walmart and the Walton family to publicly commit to $15 an hour and provide full-time work.
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